Fighting Men exhibition draws media attention

Painter Leon Golub, ceramist Pete Voulkos, and cartoonist Jack Kirby offer “images of power, violence, and action while kicking against the constraints of their respective media” inFighting Men, currently on exhibit at theHoffman Gallery.

A recent review in the Oregoniannotes “conspicuous similarities” between the artists, while singling out Golub’s paintings. “His subjects are uniformly arresting in their capacity to horrify and his painting—an accumulation of itchy daubs, not unlike camouflage—wires his figures with an awkward, off-kilter energy that suits their outsider status.”

Kirby, Golub, and Voulkos operated in different spheres of art history and discourse. Kirby innovated superhero comics brimming with an excess of balletic violence; Golub’s meditations on power and barbarity in modern man kept him in the margins of contemporary art until late in his career; and Voulkos transformed pottery into something sweaty, macho, and monumental.

Curated by Daniel Duford,Fighting Menwill run through March 3, 2013; the Hoffman Gallery is open Tuesday-Sunday, 11 a.m.-4 p.m.